I could be wrong, but I strongly doubt that the Star Quality record came before "The Message". Nobody was playing Star Quality back in those days that I know of... I don't remember that shizz at all. I think those dudes just felt the effects of that "Message" bomb droppin' and ran into the studio real quick like "hey, let's play our own version of this sh*t and get paid, n*gga!" But, like I said, I could be wrong.
And by the way, T***a, it's "pissing on the stairs" (as in the project stairwells), not pissing on the stage. Pissing on the stage is something that happens today, in 2005. Anytime that one of Kels' 13 year old female fans comes up to join him onstage. (I know, I know, I'm sorry... but how is this dude still selling records???)
OLDSCHOOL BREAKS, always a good topic, I remember checking out a GrandMasterFlash live dj show a couple of years ago, he was cutting up alot of oldschoolbreaks, I recall he cutbacked a record(bass and drums) that sounded VERY much like the You're A Customer EPMD joint,...is there a original breakbeat record behind this track ???... that Flash show kinda made me wonder...?
OLDSCHOOL BREAKS, always a good topic, I remember checking out a GrandMasterFlash live dj show a couple of years ago, he was cutting up alot of oldschoolbreaks, I recall he cutbacked a record(bass and drums) that sounded VERY much like the You're A Customer EPMD joint,...is there a original breakbeat record behind this track ???... that Flash show kinda made me wonder...?
(Im not talking bout Steve Miller Band...)
In the book "Rakim Told Me" P says that they used ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses" and muted it until only the bass and drums were audible. This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Which is why y'all dudes must know that you can't always believe something just because it came from the horse's mouth (just like y'all who have heard Dr. Dre say that the "Deep Cover" track was all played in the studio, no samples- trust me, it's a sample).
...It was credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, but the story behind the naming revealed other tensions as well. The song was a home-studio concoction of Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, featuring a memorable synthesizer hook from Jiggs Chase, that seemed to bear the influence of Peter Tosh's "Stepping Razor" and Black Uhuru's Red.[/b] Bootee and Sugar Hill mogul Sylvia Robinson could not interest Flash in recording it. He and the rappers felt the song had no energy, that the lyrics would get them booed offstage by their hardcore fans. You went to a party to forget about shit like this.
But Robinson and Bootee recorded the track anyway, peeling off Furious Five rapper Melle Mel to add his last verse from a forgotten version of "Superappin'." Robinson decided "The Message" had to be released as a single. Flash saw where this was going, and he pushed the rest of the Five into the studio to try to rap Bootee's lines. It didn't work. Instead, Bootee and Robinson added them at the end of the record, in streetside arrest skit recalling Stevie Wonder's interlude in "Living for the City." But Pandora's Box had been opened. The ensuing tug-of-wars between the group and the label and between Mel and Flash resulted in Flash leaving Sugar Hill the following year. The video appeared, with Flash and the crew lip-synching along to a rap only Mel had helped compose.
...the record became the fifth rap single to reach gold-selling status...
...It's among hip-hop's history's greatest ironies that "The Message," so artificial and marginal by the standards of the culture then, would prove at once to be a song so truthful about the generation's present and, in its righteous retail math, so influential to that generation's future culture.
The song was a home-studio concoction of Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, featuring a memorable synthesizer hook from Jiggs Chase, that seemed to bear the influence of Peter Tosh's "Stepping Razor" and Black Uhuru's Red.[/b]
That's not an assertion that's borne out by any kind of historical testimony; it's just Chang's pet theory that "The Message" constituted a "response" to Red.
I've seen him make the claim in a number of places and don't think it's really supportable. Moreover, there are no musical ideas on Red that Sly and Robbie hadn't already introduced elsewhere--it's a competent production, but by no means groundbreaking.
Comments
Oh, I think it's clear that one influenced the other; I'm just not convinced that the SQC record came first.
And by the way, T***a, it's "pissing on the stairs" (as in the project stairwells), not pissing on the stage. Pissing on the stage is something that happens today, in 2005. Anytime that one of Kels' 13 year old female fans comes up to join him onstage.
This was the first thing I thought about when I read the thread title...
I think its almost certainly an original tune... unusual for Sugarhill I know, but Sylvia Robinson intended for it to be big...
And I think if it were an interpolation we would all be aware of the source by now...
(Im not talking bout Steve Miller Band...)
In the book "Rakim Told Me" P says that they used ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses" and muted it until only the bass and drums were audible. This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Which is why y'all dudes must know that you can't always believe something just because it came from the horse's mouth (just like y'all who have heard Dr. Dre say that the "Deep Cover" track was all played in the studio, no samples- trust me, it's a sample).
...It was credited to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, but the story behind the naming revealed other tensions as well. The song was a home-studio concoction of Sugar Hill songwriter and house band percussionist Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, featuring a memorable synthesizer hook from Jiggs Chase, that seemed to bear the influence of Peter Tosh's "Stepping Razor" and Black Uhuru's Red.[/b] Bootee and Sugar Hill mogul Sylvia Robinson could not interest Flash in recording it. He and the rappers felt the song had no energy, that the lyrics would get them booed offstage by their hardcore fans. You went to a party to forget about shit like this.
But Robinson and Bootee recorded the track anyway, peeling off Furious Five rapper Melle Mel to add his last verse from a forgotten version of "Superappin'." Robinson decided "The Message" had to be released as a single. Flash saw where this was going, and he pushed the rest of the Five into the studio to try to rap Bootee's lines. It didn't work. Instead, Bootee and Robinson added them at the end of the record, in streetside arrest skit recalling Stevie Wonder's interlude in "Living for the City." But Pandora's Box had been opened. The ensuing tug-of-wars between the group and the label and between Mel and Flash resulted in Flash leaving Sugar Hill the following year. The video appeared, with Flash and the crew lip-synching along to a rap only Mel had helped compose.
...the record became the fifth rap single to reach gold-selling status...
...It's among hip-hop's history's greatest ironies that "The Message," so artificial and marginal by the standards of the culture then, would prove at once to be a song so truthful about the generation's present and, in its righteous retail math, so influential to that generation's future culture.
That's not an assertion that's borne out by any kind of historical testimony; it's just Chang's pet theory that "The Message" constituted a "response" to Red.
I've seen him make the claim in a number of places and don't think it's really supportable. Moreover, there are no musical ideas on Red that Sly and Robbie hadn't already introduced elsewhere--it's a competent production, but by no means groundbreaking.
They still do old skool stair pissin'. Tributes goin on at every NCP in the UK.